Never rub another man's rhubarb!

[thehefner]

Holy crap, but turning your TV color settings to black and white makes Tim Burton's BATMAN movie ten times more awesome than it ever was. Good call, bitemetechie!

Watching this with Mom, she put it best: "Why the hell wasn't it always like this???" It just all fits so well, especially in the scenes were you see the architecture and set design of Anton Furst's Gotham. I used to feel like those looked dated and stagey, but in B&W, it becomes a true classic throwback to German Expressionist cinema. Seriously, speaking as someone who has fallen entirely out of love with the Burton films over the years, just the simple act of changing color settings on my TV has reinvigorated the entire viewing experience.

Not to say that it's a still a good movie. Egad, no. Maybe having it edited as a silent film, accompanied by just Danny Elfman's amazing soundtrack and give it the full Fritz Lang/F.W. Murnau treatment, thereby playing to the film's true strengths without the distractions of things like the Prince soundtrack and Vicki Vale.

Ugh, god, how did any of us stand Basinger's character? She's worse than Katie Holmes' Rachel Dawes. She's so insufferably vapid and shrieky, it's hard to believe that three characters (Bruce, Joker, and Knox) are infatuated with her. Also, when she's not screaming, she's making quick little yelps like a chihuahua. Anyone else notice this?

Man, Michael Keaton's career never recovered from these films, did it? The guy was magnificent, a powerhouse of intense mad energy, but ever since these films, he's been... where? I honestly don't know! He deserved better. Even if, whatever it was he was playing here, it wasn't Bruce Wayne nor Batman. He plays Bruce like a shifty awkward nerd who can't even talk to girls, like a creepier version of Christopher Reeve's bumbling Clark Kent. And his Batman... well, Batman doesn't kill, plain and simple.

Burton's BATMAN films--especially BATMAN RETURNS--have always worked best as films about the director's own visions. If they were about original characters, I might well enjoy them more than I do. Or maybe not. Maybe I never would be able to take the style over the substance, or the lack thereof, but god damn if watching 'em in black and white doesn't go a long way to help. Maybe someday, I'll try it on RETURNS and see if it bestows some beauty onto that unremittingly ugly film.

Also, every single second Billy Dee Williams was on screen as Harvey, I thought, "Never before has heartwrenching homicidal angst been so smoooooth."

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Robert Wuhl is full of fail in everything that he does, so it makes sense that his character would spend his time sniffing Vicki Vale's panties.

One of the biggest problems with Superman-as-archetype is that it seems to have cemented certain ideas about superheroes' girlfriends, which is why we have so many fifth-rate Lois Lane knockoffs, both in the comics and in other media.

It's clear that Burton's sympathies kind of lie with the Gothic clown, rather than with the stern-faced Man in Black trying to bring him down (anyone surprised by this has never seen another Burton film EVER), but what's funny is that Nolan actually makes the Chaos vs. Order dynamic much more explicit, and yet, his Joker is also more openly acknowledged as horrific.

It's also worth noting that action movie morals don't really hold with the idea of recurring villains, which is why most superhero films end with the bad guys dying at the end, even though that's an incredibly bad practice for a franchise.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. At the risk of summoning him by invoking him name, where he hell has Whul been since ARLISS (fuck the dollar signs)? *googles* Apparently doing... one-man shows? Oh god help my art form...

It's kind of strange to me, as I could easily see Burton's sympathy being with Batman too, with a bit of tweaking to Batman's character. The lonely weirdo dressing up in black to live out his fantasies, there's some rich potential for Burton sympathies there. That said, thank god he never made that movie. Bad enough we have DeVito's Penguin to contend with.

Which is funny to consider, as the 80's were the golden era of sequelitis, were they not? For a movie that was so utterly tailored around JACK JACK JACK, the fact that they wouldn't even leave the door open for his return strikes me as magnificently bone-headed.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

What's really sad is, DeVito really is the best candidate to play the Penguin, but Burton fucking RUINED it. DeVito ALREADY played the Penguin, just not by name - ever see Other People's Money? THAT'S HIM. The entire POINT of the Penguin is that, while the Joker or Catwoman or whoever is fighting Batman, Oswald Cobblepot is fighting BRUCE WAYNE. He's the nouveau-riche asshole who represents everything wrong with rich businessmen, just as much as Bruce Wayne is The Good Rich Businessman.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I will make it a point to finally check out OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY with this in mind, because that's a rather intriguing portrait you paint. Me, I've always been fond of the Penguin who's an eloquent, theatrical type who plays being the gentleman's gentleman but is really a vicious little bastard. My point is, I love Paul Williams III.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

"I'm not your BEST friend. I'm your ONLY friend."